Marcos Orlando Letelier del Solar was a Chilean economist, politician and diplomat during the presidency of Salvador Allende. A refugee from the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, Letelier accepted several academic positions in Washington, D.C. following his exile from Chile. In 1976, agents of Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), the Pinochet regime's secret police, assassinated Letelier in Washington in a car bombing. These agents had been working in collaboration with members of the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations, an anti-Castro militant group.
The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) is an American progressive think tank, formed in 1963 and based in Washington, D.C. It was directed by John Cavanagh from 1998 to 2021. In 2021, Tope Folarin assumed the position of executive director. IPS focuses on US foreign policy, domestic policy, human rights, international economics, and national security.
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea was a Cuban film director and screenwriter. Gutiérrez Alea wrote and directed more than twenty features, documentaries, and short films, which are known for his sharp insight into post-Revolutionary Cuba, and possess a delicate balance between dedication to the revolution and criticism of the social, economic, and political conditions of the country.
The Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations was a militant group responsible for a number of terrorist activities directed at the Cuban government following the Cuban Revolution. The United States government provided them with extensive financial and logistical support throughout their existence. It was founded by a group that included Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, both of whom worked with the CIA at various times, and was composed chiefly of Cuban exiles opposed to the Castro government. It was formed in 1976 as an umbrella group for a number of anti-Castro militant groups. Its activities included a number of bombings and assassinations, including the killing of human-rights activist Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C., and the bombing of Cubana Flight 455 which killed 73 people.
Christian Frei is a Swiss filmmaker and film producer. He is mostly known for his films War Photographer (2001), The Giant Buddhas (2005) and Space Tourists (2009).
638 Ways to Kill Castro is a Channel 4 documentary film, broadcast in the United Kingdom on 28 November 2006, which tells the story of some of the numerous attempts of the Central Intelligence Agency to kill Cuba's leader Fidel Castro. It was directed by Dollan Cannell.
Ilona Marita Lorenz was a German woman who had an affair with Fidel Castro in 1959 and in January 1960 was involved in an assassination attempt by the CIA on Castro's life.
On 21 September 1976, Orlando Letelier, a leading opponent of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, was assassinated by car bombing, in Washington, D.C. Letelier, who was living in exile in the United States, was killed along with his colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt, who was in the car with her husband Michael. The assassination was carried out by agents of the Chilean secret police (DINA), and was one among many carried out as part of Operation Condor. Declassified U.S. intelligence documents confirm that Pinochet directly ordered the killing.
Jon Alpert is an American journalist and documentary filmmaker, known for his use of a cinéma vérité approach in his films.
Nicolás Guillén Landrián was a Cuban experimental filmmaker and painter.
Greg Landau is an American, San Francisco-based record and video producer, and an instructor of music and Latin American Studies focused on the social movements that produced revolutionary music and art.
Valerie Landau is an American designer, author, and educational technologist. She managed the Center for Innovation and Excellence in Learning and was formerly Director of Assessment at Samuel Merritt University where she designed a software application that facilitates analysis and assessment of how effectively an organization is meeting their goals and objectives at course, program and institutional levels.
Walden School was a private day school in Manhattan, New York City, that operated from 1914 until 1988, when it merged with the New Lincoln School; the merged school closed in 1991. Walden was known as an innovator in progressive education. Faculty were addressed by first names and students were given great leeway in determining their course of study. Located on Central Park West at 88th Street, the school was very popular with intellectual families from the Upper West Side and with families based in Greenwich Village. The Walden School was founded in 1914 by Margaret Naumburg, an educator who later became an art therapist. Claire Raphael Reis, a musician, was also involved.
Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang is a 1979 political documentary film produced and directed by Jack Willis and Saul Landau, written by Jack Willis and Penny Bernstein, narrated by Penny Bernstein with cinematography by Zack Krieger and Haskell Wexler. Photographed by Sandi Sissel.
Jack Willis was an American journalist, writer and filmmaker.
Mick Gold is a British documentary film maker, photographer and journalist, who has written for publications such as Creem, Melody Maker, and Let It Rock.
The United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) made numerous unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. There were also attempts by Cuban exiles, sometimes in cooperation with the CIA. The 1975 Church Committee claimed eight proven CIA assassination attempts between 1960 and 1965. In 1976, President Gerald Ford issued an Executive Order banning political assassinations. In 2006, Fabián Escalante, former chief of Cuba's intelligence, stated that there had been 634 assassination schemes or attempts. The last known plot to assassinate Castro was by Cuban exiles in 2000.
Gianni Minà was an Italian journalist, writer, magazine editor, and television host. He collaborated with both Italian and International newspapers and magazines; produced hundreds of reports for RAI ; conceived and hosted television programs, as well as produced successful documentary films on the lives of Che Guevara, Muhammad Ali, Fidel Castro, Rigoberta Menchú, Silvia Baraldini, Subcomandante Marcos and Diego Maradona.
Johnny Symons is a documentary filmmaker focusing on LGBT cultural and political issues. He is a professor in the Cinema Department at San Francisco State University, where he runs the documentary program and is the director and co-founder of the Queer Cinema Project. He received his BA from Brown University and his MA in documentary production from Stanford University. He has served as a Fellow in the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program.
Robert William Scherrer was an FBI agent posted in Latin America in the 1970s. Named by journalist John Dinges as an "intelligence centre all by himself", he had extensive sources in the intelligence communities and military across the countries of the Southern Cone, and was one of the agents transmitting information from local intelligence sources to the United States as part of Operation Condor. He later participated in investigations relating to Condor's international killings, and is one of John Dinges' sources. He was the person who, in 1979, revealed the existence of "phase 3" of Operation Condor, the programme of international assassinations.
